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Early biographies of Milton speak of his love of music. The son of a composer of sacred and secular music, Milton played the organ and bass viol, and 'had a delicate tuneable Voice'. According to his nephew Edward Phillips, 'Hee had an excellent Ear, and could bear a part both in Vocal & Instrumental Music'. Instructed in music by his father, when entrusted with the education of his two nephews, aged 9 and 10, 'he made his Nephews Songsters, and sing, from the time they were with him'.1 When Milton visited Italy in 1638-39, he shipped home 'a Chest ... of choice Musick books of the best Masters flourishing about that time in Italy', Monteverdi, Vecchi, Gesualdo, and others. Even after becoming blind, he 'diverted himself with Performing' on a chamber organ in his house, 'which they say he did Well ... and this was a great Relief to him after he had lost his Sight'.2Twenty-one compositions by John Milton the Elder are extant. Most of these are part-songs and anthems, polyphonic and set for four, five, or six voices, sometimes accompanied by strings. Only one of these, a madrigal 'Fair Oriana', is secular, and the others set religious texts, in English or Latin-such texts as David's lament for Absalom ('When David heard'). Four pieces are wholly instrumental, set for a consort of viols. All of his extant music is designed for domestic performance, rather than as part of a church service. He is said to have written an elaborate 40-part 'In Nomine' (like Thomas Tallis's 'Spem in Alium'), for which he received a 'noble present' from a visiting dignitary, but the piece is not extant. The music of John Milton the Elder is conservative, Elizabethan, rather like the music of Tallis 'in its seriousness ... deployment of counterpoint, and even choice of instrument'. Campbell and Corns suggest that the father's musical proclivities are echoed in the son: 'the poet's preference for part-singing, the organ, and the viol (as opposed to solo singing, the harpsichord, and the violin) place him in the same conservative musical tradition as his father'.3In 'At a Solemn Music' and his Latin poem 'Ad Patrem', Milton speaks of 'Voice and Verse', music and poetry, as 'harmonious sisters', complementary 'related arts' (cognatas artes), capable, in their 'mixed power', to endow 'dead things with inbreathed sense'. This passage in 'At a Solemn Music' is one of Milton's many references to the affective power of music, its ability, with 'linked sweetness long drawn out', to 'pierce' the listener's 'meeting soul'.4 'At a Solemn Music' is characteristic of Milton in claiming a relationship between practical music, sung, played, or listened to, and heavenly music, the 'undisturbed song of pure concent' (6) sung and played by angelic choirs, accompanied by harps and trumpets. He differs in this respect from Donne, who in 'Loves Alchemy' is scornful of those who confuse this 'day's rude hoarse minstrelsy' with the music of the spheres.5In 'Ad Patrem', his elegant plea to the father who was supporting him financially, the young Milton urges his practical-minded father not to despise 'the poet's song, a work divine' (nec tu vatis opus divinem despica carmen), or feel contempt for the sacred muses. He praises his father for not putting pressure on him to enter the legal profession or seek fortune in the dim city, seeking to amass piles of money. Indeed, the poet suggests, his father only pretends to hate the Muse.Phoebus, wishing to share himself between the two of us, gave one lot of gifts to me and the other to my father, and we, father and son, possess the divided god between us.As the metaphor of the divided god implies, the harmonious sisters are seen in 'Ad Patrem' as fully equal and as kindred ways of life, rather than as contending for supremacy.6In his sonnet to Henry Lawes, who played the Attendant Spirit and wrote the music for Milton's Ludlow Masque, Milton presents the relationship between voice and verse in very different terms. …
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